


Endless Flight

by Kikimay



Category: True Detective
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kikimay/pseuds/Kikimay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Why should I live in history, huh Marty? What the fuck could this world possibly still want from me?” </i><br/>Rust and Marty, post-Carcosa. A tale of death, doubt, healing and stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endless Flight

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Endless Flight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3626514) by [Kiki (Kikimay)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kikimay/pseuds/Kiki). 



> Oh hi! Here's my first True Detective fanfic. I hope it doesn't suck much. I fell in love with the show when I watched it for the first time, one year ago, but it actually took me some time to process the feeling and write something about it. Plus I'm coming to terms with Marty, thanks to all the amazing fanfics here, so you can see this story as pre-slash, maybe? Anyway these two assholes should totally get married.
> 
> Many thanks to *blackeyedblonde* who helped me with Marty and Rust's talking and the beta-reading. (How do you put a link in the notes here?) 
> 
> Really hope you enjoy this thing.

 

_“Why should I live in history? This is a place where nothing is solved. Someone told me time is a flat circle. Everything we will do or have ever done we will do it over and over again.”_  
Rust Cohle – The Secret Fate of all Life (1.05)

 

 

 

 

 

The dawn was peeking behind the horizon. Orange pink tinged the blue of the sky and the lost clouds in the windy space. An increasing heat was warming the morning air that smelled of dried clay and frost, dead leaves and smoke.

Rust Cohle had waited for the new day with open eyes. Nestled in the darkness of the night, he had breathed softly against the damp pillow and remembered.

Then he heard Marty get up, make coffee, open the front door to pick up the newspaper and make comments in a low voice about the daily wave of shit. He waited for him to go shopping before getting out of pillow den that he had created in the guest room. He wore an old robe, changed his underwear and went downstairs. He opened the door and went out into the garden.

Dry clay and frost, fuel for lamps, burned insects and smog.

Beside the moon the flashing lights of a plane were shining and blue mingled with the violent red of the morning.

Barefoot, Rust walked a few steps on the damp grass, savoring the softness that quieted his thirst and, with two fingers pressed against his jugular listened to the birds singing.

A few feet away there was a tree and on the tree a nest full of birds screaming and pecking the air. Hungry. The soft touch of a feathered wing stopped Rust. He kneeled on the grass. A mockingbird with a yellow beak was laying on the ground, lifeless. Eyes open glossy and black, a worm near his corpse; the offspring’s dinner.

Rust looked up at the nest and then again at the corpse of the ground. The metallic taste of blood invaded his mouth and, for a second, a feeling similar to pity squeezed his heart.

Then he noticed the red tiny flowers under the mockingbird and the filthy earthworms, the flies.

He lifted his gaze once again and the horizon was on fire, brilliant and menacing. Alive.

 

 

 

 

“You’ll never gonna believe the shit they’re starting to sell at the shop. I almost wished you were there, to piss off the clerks with your endless rants ...”

Marty was back and he was yelling from downstairs.

“Rust?” He called, climbing the stairs.

He stopped just before the door and knocked slightly. This was their life together now: predetermined rhythms and unusual kindness, as if they were both made of fragile glass.

“Come in. It’s your home,” Rust mumbled, a consumed cigarette on his lips.

“Jesus Christ, man! When will you learn to pop up the window every now and then?” Marty replied, raising the yellow shutter.

The sun made its entry in the room and faded blue of the wall revived. Marty turned to look at Rust, eyes swollen and red like a baby who just spent hours crying.

Rust was quiet. In the weeks after the escape from the hospital he had exchanged just few words with Marty and a stubborn silence to the rest of mankind. He was tired. His belly had been ripped open and sewed up and no one had been able to reassemble it differently, adding interest and desire between the layers of bleeding flesh.

“Hey,” Marty greeted, timidly. “Breakfast?”

Rust refused with a movement that shook his long dirty hair.

“Pills.”

“At this point you really want to destroy what’s left of your stomach?” Marty mumbled, reluctantly handing the meds to the stubborn patient. Then he went over the den of pillows on the floor, because Rust lost his ability to rest in a proper bed. “Again with this shit?” He asked, pointing at the photos attached on the wall.

Photos that Marty didn’t want to watch anymore, photos that Rust couldn’t stop looking. The tone of  Marty’s voice, however, was between the worried and considerate.

_“_ There’s no rest for me, Marty. You should know that by now.”

Marty shook his head and dumped the photos on the trashcan.

_“I live in the act_. I can’t conceive a different existence.”

“Why don’t you live in the act of a shampoo, for example? Start thinking about the simple things.”

Rust raised his hands shaken by a constant tremor. He hadn’t consumed a drop of alcohol since the fight. His addicted body was rebelling to pain of deprivation.

“Jesus ... let me help you. We should ask Maggie how to handle this kind of situation. It’s not safe to do these things alone. It’s not safe.”

“What is safe?” Rust asked, a grimace like a smile.

 

 

He remembered Maggie. Clean cotton and salty aftertaste of grass and tea. He forgot other memories, the glint of white hands grasping the cabinet on his kitchen and the firmness of her ass.

Maggie was a green oak of the past days. As Laurie, as Claire.

He thought of them in the long sleepless nights after the coma. He thought about Claire’s pale arms and her eyes and the time he saw Sophia, still inside her, reaching out with a hand to know him. The moment when everything, past and present, had merged in an unicum to give birth to a new Rust.

A Rust who was a father.

 

 

“Hot enough?” Marty asked, dipping Rust’s long hair in the sink full of water. He had bought a new shampoo that smelled like deep pink and vanilla.

“You could have a career in this. You play the nurse part well.”

“Shut your mouth and lie down. You don’t want to keep smelling like an old dog ...”

Marty had gentle fingers. They moved up and down on his scalp, giving him pleasure. Rust could close his eyes.

 

 

When Sophia died, the sky was tinged with gray. Rust had dazedly observed the space outside the window, without wondering about the disdain that Claire had begun to feel for him. There was a fierce storm outside and the lightning was lighting up the sky. After the storm a rainbow appeared in the distance. The tree next to her daughter’s room was full of ripe fruits.

 

 

_“Why should I live in history, huh Marty? What the fuck could this world possibly still want from me?”_

Marty had hesitated, brandishing the comb in midair.

He didn’t do that kind of work since his daughters. Heck, he never really combed Audrey and Macie’s hair, Maggie was more competent and fast. But Rust’s hands were trembling and his stomach had been ripped open and sewed up in the blood.

And he hadn’t spoken since. He hadn’t really spoken.

 

 

When Sophia was born, the sun was shining on Galveston after two days of incessant rain. Rust had squeezed Claire’s sweaty hand and breathed with her. The delivery room smelled of salt and blood and Claire’s belly was pouring out constant and deep waves. For the first time in his life Rust Cohle felt like belonging, like knowing.

 

 

_“I am what I know_ , Marty.” Rust said, wet hair, staring at another place in another time.

Marty had a cup of tea in his hands and was sitting next to him, on the patio overlooking the street. Patiently he waited for his words.

“I was at the end and I was done. And I felt ... Sophia. And when the knife pierced my stomach ...”

Marty winced.

“I took it out. _Let it loose_. Like the laces on Dora Lange’s wrists. Because I didn’t want to be anymore ... I wanted to get back to what I knew.”

The tea was bitter and cold. Rust’s hands were shaking and on his face big tears were flowing and falling on his robe, where the long pink scar was hidden as memory of death. Marty couldn’t help but think of a broken Christ, tired of his cross, and the thought made him blush.

“What did you know, Rust?”

“Life is bad, Marty.” He replied with certainty as those who reveal a deeply assimilated truth. “It’s a constant circle that claims our participation, even our assent. But there can’t be any consent. And there can’t be any purpose or meaning. I stopped to know, because I was wiser. Shit … I didn’t want to know anything anymore, I didn’t want to know anything about this world. But now ... “

“What now?”

Rust turned to look at Marty. In his eyes a light was shining, vulnerability and – Marty couldn’t even believe that – bewilderment.

“Did we break the circle or are we still in the fucking dance?” he asked, rolling his eyes in exasperation. “The death would have broken it, definitely.”

“It’s broken! Childress is dead and that other... Rust, you’re not thinking about your own death? "

“I don’t know if I should be here. I don’t know.” He admitted, even more bewildered. “Once there was only certainty.”

Marty tried to find the right words, failing. Then he turned to look at the stars shining above him.

Once there was only darkness.

“Do you ever think that ...” he began. Then stopped, unable to properly articulate his thoughts. Then sighed. “Do you ever think that the light makes a big mess to get here? I mean, it messes things up. Creates uncertainty.” Rust didn’t reply. “You’ve always been able to see beyond, to feel ... you were driving us and you’ve always had faith in your certainties ...”

Rust’s eyes were moist, dark in the shadows and beautiful. Marty had never really realized how beautiful they were.

“I don’t know if I can do this for you,” he admitted. “Help you understand how this shit works.”

Rust smiled and pulled out another cigarette.

“I don’t ask for this, Marty.”

“No, you didn’t.”

Inattentive father and unfaithful husband, Marty had never taken care of anyone before. However he could, maybe, take care of Rust. Maybe. Yes.

“You don’t need to,” he said and touched his friend’s calloused and trembling hand. Rust didn’t break the contact.

When Sophia was born, Rust had taken her into his arms and immediately shook her hand, the same hand with which she had sought him from inside Claire. In the contact Rust broke and belonged, lost control and flew with all the things of the world. Flew without beginning or end, in an endless flight.

“So what we do now?” He asked. “We’ll be enjoying the illusion of a higher order that protects us? Of a happy ending?”

Marty tried to smile, tea definitely put aside for the desire to have a beer.

“We’ll look at the stars.” He replied, looking up.

Beside the tree with the nest, over the dark horizon, high up next to the moon, high up.

 

 

 

 


End file.
